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Monday, February 27, 2012

Masterpieces of Music: Beethoven, Part 6

Now, finally, we come to the Diabelli Variations--please see the previous post for the background. I felt this piece needed the stage to be set. We saw that the variation form as a series of primarily melodic variations, originally improvised, over a repeating bass line or chord progression, has a very long history. We also saw that Bach achieved a marvelous synthesis of this technique with the other long-established one of canon in his Goldberg Variations.

I mention all this because the context is important. Bach
and Beethoven are like two high mountains standing high above the valleys
below. When Beethoven set out to write his variations on a waltz given to him
by the publisher Diabelli, he was very conscious of the example of Bach. In a
sense, the Diabelli variations are a response to the Goldberg Variations.

Beethoven, as you may imagine, did not want to duplicate
Bach’s feat, but to see if he could surpass it. There is an interesting echo in
Beethoven’s set. In the Goldbergs, Bach includes a quodlibet, a variation in
which two different popular tunes are combined over the harmonic progression.
Beethoven manages to parody a tune from Mozart’s Don Giovanni as one of his
variations.

Here are a few points to be aware of regarding the piece:

Beethoven
was completely deaf when he composed these

Anton
Diabelli, the publisher and composer, wrote a waltz in early 1819 that he
invited some 50 composers to write variations on

Beethoven
had a certain amount of disdain for the waltz, which he called a Schusterfleck
“cobbler’s patch” meaning that it was crudely constructed

He
wrote about 2/3rds of the music in 1819, then set it aside until 1823,
when he added a number of variations to complete the work

Even
for Beethoven this piece is very unusual—the theme is undistinguished and
so a lot of the variations are parodies, mocking various aspects of the
theme. I’m reminded of an English teacher I had at university who asked us
to read a short story by Franz Kafka called “In the Penal Colony”. This is
a very dark story about a prison where there is a diabolical machine that
carves the name of your crime onto your body. Our professor strode into
the class, tossed the book on the lectern, grinned and said “this is a
very funny story.” Then he went through it in detail and showed us how, by
exaggeration, incongruity and other literary devices, the story is
actually very funny—black humor, of course. Similarly, Beethoven’s
variations show the theme in various comic guises through exaggeration,
incongruity and other devices.

It is
also unusual because with Beethoven usually the opening of the piece
signals the weight of what is to follow—but not in this case where the brevity
and somewhat crude simplicity of the theme is no guide to what is to come—this
is part of the joke.

The
Diabelli Variations are late Beethoven which poses some challenges to the
listener as late
Beethoven usually involves long forms with larger organization and each
piece tends to use a unique form

Also
typical of late Beethoven is intense transformation—this theme is
dissected, compressed, expanded, X-rayed and dissolved. By variation XX,
if we hadn’t heard everything in between, we would hardly recognize the
theme. It has evolved like a living organism

Another
quality of late Beethoven is that the whole work has an overall
progression that we might call psychological or even spiritual—witness the
transformation over 50 minutes of the mundane waltz into the transcendent
final minuet

Beethoven, unique among composers, creates a musical
work that has a personality, comes alive, and in this work we can hear that
personality emerging from the simple and ordinary waltz theme.

Let’s look at the waltz. There are three important elements:

A) the turn beginning to the melody (the bass line also has the same turn,
inverted)

B) the descending 4ths and 5ths from the opening
of the melody and

C) the modulating sequences in the second half.

The triple
fugue that is the penultimate variation has three subjects, each of which uses
one of these three elements. Here is Alfred Brendel playing the waltz and the first few variations with the score. The theme itself takes the first 54 seconds:

Another interesting aspect is mode: it is a cliché of Classical variations that after a few variations in the major,
there is one in the parallel minor. Except for Var. 9 the first 28 variations are all in C major, then variations 29, 30, and 31 are all in C minor with the last
having a section in Eb. Variation 32 is a triple fugue in Eb, which is the
relative major of C minor, meaning that it is closely related by having the
same key signature of three flats. The final variation, a minuet, returns to C
major. Ironically, this transcendent minuet evokes the kind of grace and
delicacy that Mozart is renowned for…

Just as in Kafka’s short story, there is something absurd
about the greatest set of variations in the Classical Era being written on such
a trivial waltz. It is a very Beethoven thing to do as he loved the challenge
of making a great deal from very little. One thinks of the theme from the Fifth Symphony. I doubt
any other composer in the whole thousand years of Western music could have
matched this accomplishment, though Brahms, among others, certainly tried. Here is a 'roadmap' to the whole of the piece:

Tempo

Meaning

Key

Material

Theme

Vivace

Lively

C maj.

A B C

Var I

Alla Marcia maestoso

March, majestic

C

B C

Var II

Poco allegro

Somewhat fast

C

C

Var III

L’istesso tempo

same tempo

C

A C

Var IV

Un poco vivace

A bit lively

C

A

Var V

Allegro vivace

Fast and lively

C

B

Var VI

Allegro ma non troppo e serioso

Fast, but not too much and
serious

C

A

Var VII

Allegro

Fast

C

B C

Var VIII

Poco vivace

A bit lively

C

C

Var IX

Allegro pesante e risoluto

Fast, heavy & resolute

C min.

A

Var X

Presto

Very fast

C

C

Var XI

Allegretto

Moderately fast

C

A

Var XII

Un poco più moto

A bit faster

C

A inv.

Var XIII

Vivace

Lively

C

Bare ver.

Var XIV

Grave e maestoso

Slow and majestic

C

A C

Var XV

Presto scherzando

Very fast and playful

C

B

Var XVI

Allegro

Fast

C

B

Var XVII

[Allegro]

[Fast]

C

B

Var XVIII

Poco moderato

Somewhat moderate

C

A

Var XIX

Presto

Very fast

C

C?

Var XX

Andante

Walking speed

C

Bare C?

Var XXI

Allegro con brio—meno allegro

Fast with energy—less fast
(alternating)

C

A

Var XXII

Allegro molto alla ‘Notte e girono faticar’ di
Mozart

Very fast after Mozart’s
‘Night and day I’ve been working…’

C

B

Var XXIII

Allegro assai

Very fast

C

A

Var XXIV

Fughetta: Andante

Little fugue: walking pace

C

B

Var XXV

Allegro

Fast

C

A B

Var XXVI

[No tempo given—same as
prev.]

C

Bare

Var XXVII

Vivace

Lively

C

Bare

Var
XXVIII

Allegro

Fast

C

C

Var XXIX

Adagio ma non troppo

Slow, but not too much

C min.

A

Var XXX

Andante, sempre cantabile

Walking, always singing

C min.

C

Var XXXI

Largo, molto expressivo

Very slow, very expressive

C min. (& Eb)

A B ornate

Var XXXII

Fuga: Allegro

Fugue: fast

Eb maj.

B C A

Var
XXXIII

Tempo di Minuetto moderato

Minuet speed

C maj

A B C

In the roadmap I have created the last column gives the
thematic material used in each variation. The three basic elements, the turn
figure, the descending 4ths and 5ths, and the rising chromatic progression I
have labeled A, B and C. All three are in the theme, of course, but the only
other place we find all three together are in the next-to-last fugue and in the
final minuet. Every other variation focuses on one or two of these three
elements. Often only one. For example, variations iv, vi, ix, xi, xii, xviii,
xxi, xxiii and xxix use just the turn figure which is sometimes reduced to just
a trill. That is pretty amazing in itself, that he could derive nine variations
from those four little notes. The descending 4th and 5th
figure is focused on in variations v, xv, xvi, xvii, xxii, and xxiv. Some
variations I have marked “bare” meaning that the theme is reduced to its bare
bones—in xiii, for example, most of the theme is taken away, leaving only
rests! In xxviii, it is reduced to nothing but the diminished 7th
chord and tonic harmonies. In contrast, in var. xxxi an enormous amount of
intricate ornamentation is added. But the most unique aspect of how Beethoven
explores the theme is not by adding notes, as just about every other composer
would have done, but by subtracting elements, dissolving the theme into its
tiniest parts and then building something new from these fragments. For a
composer, listening to this is like a lesson in how to write music. For any
listener, the piece is a spiritual journey that reveals the hidden beauties
that lie beneath the surface of even the most ordinary and unassuming things in
the world—like a ‘cobbler’s patch’ waltz by the very ordinary composer Anton
Diabelli.

To sum up: in this piece Beethoven re-invents the whole idea of variation: instead of each variation using the same chord progression or a minor version of it as so many other Classical period variation sets do, he takes the theme apart, discovers its constituent elements, fractures it, re-constructs it and finally transcends it. Each variation is an interesting piece of music in itself, but the set as a whole, with all the interrelationships among the variations and to the original theme, is something unprecedented in music. Now here is the rest of the set, also in the performance by Brendel:

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About Me

Born in Alberta, Canada, grew up on Vancouver Island, lived a decade in Montreal, resident in Mexico since 1998. Degrees in music from McGill University in performance, post-graduate study in musicology. From 2008 to 2011 I wrote a large set of songs for voice and guitar on poems by Robert Graves, Wallace Stevens, Victor Hugo, Rilke, Aristophanes, Anna Akhmatova, Roethke, Li Po, John Donne and Philip Larkin.
Catalogue includes two suites for solo guitar, chamber music for violin, viola and guitar, two guitars and harpsichord and other combinations including three pieces for guitar orchestra published by Guitarissimo of Stockholm, Sweden. In the last couple of years I have focused on music for orchestra and so far I have written an overture and three symphonies.
Publications include two books of pedagogy for guitar, one on technique and the other on playing Bach, which included eight new transcriptions for guitar.
Four Pieces for Violin and Guitar are available from The Avondale Press: http://www.theavondalepress.com/catalog/four-pieces/
In April 2015 a new piece for violin and piano, "Chase" was premiered in a concert at Belles Artes in San Miguel de Allende, Gto. Mexico.